The present invention relates to the monitoring of lengths of hose and is particularly applicable to the monitoring of flexible heavy duty hoses used to transfer oil at sea. Such hoses are known as fluid transport hoses.
It is often necessary to load and discharge crude oil at sea due to problems of berthing large ocean going tankers alongside shore facilities in shallow waters.
A Single Buoy Mooring system is generally used for this purpose where for example oil is conveyed through steel sub surface pipelines from onshore storage or pumping facilities to a point on the sea bed under the surface floating buoy.
Flexible submarine hoses connect from the fixed pipeline via the buoy through floating hoses on the surface to a "pick-up" point which is connected, as required, to the tanker manifold. Both the submarine and floating hose sections comprise individual sections bolted together as required.
It is a problem in such a system of loading and unloading tankers that in the event of one of the hose sections, of which there are several, breaking, oil will leak out and cause pollution. In order therefore to avoid environmental pollution, it is desirable to detect imminent leakage of oil from a hose section prior to its occurrence so as to enable the hose section to be replaced.
If ample warning is provided by the detection system there would be substantial savings in costly, and frequent hose inspection procedures, and the down time of the oil pumping apparatus may be kept to a minimum. That is to say to the time necessary for the physical replacement of the hose section.
If on the other hand leakage has already commenced, then the down time will necessarily be significantly longer coupled with the risk of penalties imposed by third parties.